2026 Autumn Festival | New Artwork
2026 Schools in Cinemas Programme | A special film programme for our secondary school students
Barry Barclay Retrospective | A special programme celebrating filmmaker Barry Barclay
Grace: A Prayer For Peace (2025) | With special guest Dame Robin White
The Carterton Collection 2026 | By Hand (2026) World premiere + Georgie Girl (2021) 25th Anniversary Screening
The Subject of Documentary | A Masterclass with Annie Goldson
Red Mole: A Romance (2023) | With special guest Annie Goldson
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) | 25 Anniversary Screening | Extended Edition
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) | Extended Edition
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Extended Edition
Aliens (1986) | 40th Anniversary Screening
Spring Highlights 2025
The 2025 Spring Programme celebrated heritage, community, and the region’s rich screen history. A special screening of Never Forgotten: The Marines of Masterton — The Director’s Cut (2025) offered audiences a deeper look into the legacy of the US Marine Corps’ time in Wairarapa, exploring their connection with the local community and the memorial created in their honour.
Film heritage took centre stage in the Carterton Entertainment Heritage Walk, a guided journey through the town’s cultural and cinematic past. Highlights included stops at the former Carterton Regent Theatre site and the Lounge Bar, where films were screened in the 2000s, alongside stories of festivals, venues and creative events that have helped shape Carterton's identity.
Autumn Highlights 2025
The 2025 Autumn Programme celebrated creativity, connection, and cinematic heritage. This year’s focus was a retrospective honouring Masterton-born film editor Annie Collins, featuring daily screenings of films she has edited across her extraordinary 50-year career, alongside Q&As and her inspiring masterclass Chaos and Creativity.
Opening Night featured a special screening of the newly digitally restored Barry Barclay classic The Neglected Miracle (1985), and we celebrated the World Premiere of Mark Pacey’s debut documentary Never Forgotten: The Marines of Masterton (2025).
This year also introduced the Schools in Cinemas Programme and the Wairarapa 50-Hour Film Project, inspiring the region’s next generation of filmmakers, and included an engaging masterclass with acclaimed director Rob Sarkies on the theme A Sense of Place.
Spring Highlights 2024
The 2024 Spring Programme brought film, heritage and hands-on creativity into the community, with events across the region. A guided Cinema Walk through Masterton explored the town's long history of cinema and theatres, dating back to the 1890s, before concluding at Aratoi with a free archival film screening courtesy of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
Acclaimed filmmaker Vincent Ward presented an improvisation masterclass in his hometown of Greytown and introduced two of his early films, Ma Olsen (1977) and In Spring One Plants Alone (1980), in Martinborough. Photographer Brian Scadden offered a rare glimpse into Victorian photographic techniques through wet-plate photography workshops for secondary school students and the public. Wairarapa Fresh Shorts showcased new work by local and regional filmmakers.
Autumn Highlights 2024
The 2024 Autumn Programme marked a major new chapter for the festival, with its first filmmaker retrospective celebrating the extraordinary career of Wairarapa-born filmmaker Vincent Ward. Across 19 events, the programme brought together rarely seen and newly restored films, masterclasses, film and artist talks, archival television, poetry, and photography. Highlights included the first-ever cinema screening of Ma Olsen (1977), Ward's earliest surviving film, alongside In Spring One Plants Alone (1980), Rain of the Children (2009) and A State of Siege (1978). The programme also presented two episodes of Barry Barclay's landmark television series Tangata Whenua (1975).
The programme also included filmmaking and wet-plate photography workshops, a film funding seminar, and masterclasses with Vincent Ward and cinematographer Derrick Sims. Sims also premiered Through a Glass, Lightly (2024), a new documentary about Wairarapa photographer Brian Scadden, co-produced by Jane Ross and made especially for the festival. A presentation of A State of Siege combined film and poetry for Janet Frame's 100th birthday, while Ward's Inhale | Exhale artist talk and book signing brought together film, photography and painting.
Spring Highlights 2023
The 2023 spring programme brought Wairarapa Fresh Shorts to Circus Cinema in Martinborough, showcasing a collection of short films by talented filmmakers from the Wairarapa and Greater Wellington region.
The programme featured A Girl Called Elvis by Lindsay Christopherson, The Polycees by Celia Jaspers, Follow the Light by Cameron Madams and The Reapers by Derrick Sims, with audiences invited to meet the filmmakers and hear about the stories behind their work.
Autumn Highlights 2023
Autumn 2023 strongly reflected a focus on place, Māori storytelling and audience engagement. The programme brought together films spanning more than four decades, from Dame Gaylene Preston’s 1980 documentary Learning Fast, filmed at Mākoura College, to contemporary local productions including Shut Eye (2022) and Saviour (2022). Te Rua (1991) and Tūrangawaewae: A Place to Stand (2003) were programmed together, connecting Masterton-born filmmaker Barry Barclay (Ngāti Apa), composer Warren Maxwell (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Te Rangi), cinematographer Waka Attewell and the work of lead actor Wi Kuki Kaa (Ngati Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu).
Audience engagement was central, with filmmakers and local practitioners joining audiences throughout the programme. Dame Gaylene Preston presented a Q&A with two former subjects of Learning Fast, while Celia Jaspers, Michael Stephens and Kieran Charnock joined the Shut Eye and Saviour discussion. The programme also extended into the community through a Wairarapa film history photographic display at Masterton District Library, a free screening of The Adventures of Tintin (2011), co-produced by Peter Jackson, and a screening of The Pen, the animated series created by Guy Capper and Jemaine Clement (Ngāti Kahungunu), a former Mākoura College student, alongside Learning Fast. Day One, formerly The Outlook for Sunday, made its annual trip from Auckland to facilitate filmmaking workshops with students across the Wairarapa, hosted at Kuranui College and Wairarapa College, with Chris Waddell leading the programme.
Spring Highlights 2022
Spring 2022 took the festival to South Wairarapa, pairing Zia Mandviwalla’s acclaimed short Night Shift (2012) with Hīmiona Grace’s The Pā Boys (2014). Hīmiona Grace (Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Hauiti, Te Āti Awa) directed The Pā Boys, with both films featuring music by local composer Warren Maxwell (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Te Rangi). Warren joined the audience for a Q&A about his work, the films and his career, with special guests from UCOL’s Performing Arts (Māori and Pacific Dance) students also attending to engage directly with him and gain insight and inspiration from someone working professionally in music and the performing arts. The evening created a valuable connection between an established local creative and emerging performers looking towards careers in the industry.
Autumn and Winter Highlights 2022
Autumn and Winter Highlights 2022 brought together local filmmakers, performers, musicians, students and audiences across Wairarapa. The programme paired Stef Harris’s Blue Moon (2018), starring Mark Hadlow and Jed Brophy, with Milk Stains (2022), a short made by Wairarapa College students Luca Neilsen and Daniel Johnston-Kanavatoa. Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, Luca and Daniel joined audiences for a Q&A, while Alfie Leota from Victoria University moderated a conversation. Swagger of Thieves (2022) connected the festival with Wairarapa’s music community, with radio hosts Graham Tuckett and Mark Rogers introducing Julian Boshier’s documentary about the NZ band Head Like a Hole. The Old Man Next Door (2022), directed by Aidan Otene Dickens and starring Lawrence Wharerau, was paired with Barry Barclay’s Ngāti (1987), with Waka Attewell sharing stories about his friendship with the filmmaker. The programme also included Derrick Sim’s Come Morning (2022), paired with Fizz (2000), starring Jemaine Clement. Local secondary school students and film students from Massey University’s CoCA programme and Victoria University’s film programme attended screenings and engaged directly with the industry.
The Winter programme moved to Carterton, pairing Luke Ross’s Our Money (2022), featuring Carterton’s Helen Dew and music composed by William Philipson, with High Tide, Don’t Hide (2021), about Aotearoa’s School Strike 4 Climate NZ. Philipson was also the composer for High Tide, Don’t Hide. The following day, Luke and William led a practical filmmakers’ workshop exploring short-film production, music and funding in Aotearoa.